Monday, January 19, 2009

The Mumbai Kite Festival - or Makar Sankrati





Note that the kite flyer isn't actually holding the string
but is letting his "man Friday" do it. Very Mumbai.


Nancy and Liam enjoy the first moments on the beach!


Thursday was Makar Sankrati - no idea what it's all about and none of our colleagues were able to tell us. Jagdish took us down to Chowpatty Beach, however, to see thousands of kites that were being flown in conjunction with the festival. Much like in the Kiterunner, there was a bit of competition between the flyers do see who could "cut" down the other kites. Jagdish ran two kites for Liam - who knew we had our very own Kiterunner on staff?

Liam found the whole thing rather boring but it was my first time on the "beach" - definitely the best people watching we've done in Bombay. Thousands of folks milling about, flying kites, dining. Liam took a spin on the hand-propelled rides. Although he wanted to go for the ferris wheel (also human-powered), it looked far too dangerous and given that traffic was at its peak, I knew there was no possible way we could make it to the hospital in the event of an accident. So Liam got a big fat wet blanket no!


Liam wanted to show eating the cotton candy.

Liam on the hand-powered ride. Behind is the wheel of death -
you can actually see people hanging off (weighting it when
it needs to slow or stop so others can get on.).


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